In the above video, you can see the bees streaming in and out the of hive entrance holes. You can also see, slightly out of focus, several younger bees doing what is called "washboarding." When they washboard on my hive, the bees will line up in rows on the hive's exterior surface near the entrance. There, usually facing towards the ground, they will move diligently forward and backward with what looks like a scrubbing motion. See the video below for a better shot.
In the midst of all this honey bee activity, I also noticed several bumblebees flying around the hive. I assume that they could smell the honey being produced in the hive and were looking for an opportunity to steal some . It was while I was watching the bumblebees, however, that I noticed an unusual behavior. During the it's snooping around the hive, one of the bumblebees suddenly grabbed one of the many drones loitering in front of the hive. The two fell to the ground in a buzzing tangle, and, although he briefly tried to resist, the drone was soon dead. At this point I expected the bumblebee to leave the dead drone, but, instead, she flew him up to a nearby bush and continued to hold on to him. I managed to take a photograph of the bumblebee (below). From looking at the enlarged photograph, the only thing I can guess is that the bumblebee is trying to extract honey from the drone, which he probably does contain in small amounts.
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| The recently killed honey bee drone after he was killed by the much larger bumblebee. |
I have read of cases in which bees will eat through the bases of flowers to extract the nectar within, but I've never heard of bees eating through other bees to extract honey.
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